An interesting dilema when pricing your content

High demand and downloads doesn't always translate or mean higher prices when selling your video or photos online. This isn't like the stock market where the hot IPO creates major demand and then price soars on the first day of trading. So what happened to the basic laws of supply and demand that we all slept through during Economics 101 and how it is used to determine price? Obviously a bidding war over the latest Britney Spear's outrageous photo or a video of the 9/11 attacks can increase the value based on the exclusivity or the sheer uniqueness of a shot. But does a high number of downloads or purchased licenses mean a higher value? Not always but it can change from case to case from what we have researched here at Cutcaster.

We found that, when looking at how to price your media, the value can decrease the more times people license or buy your content for use in advertising, filmmaking, publishing or graphic design. That makes sense. For example, an advertiser can't have the same images or photos that a competitor has used to promote a similar product. Exclusivity. Imagine if you saw a similar images in an advertisement for Crest toothpaste which was the same as one you saw for Colgate. For this industry and market, once used content has become somewhat worthless to others based on exclusivity. However, a documentary film maker can re-use images or footage that the advertiser used and the content shouldn't lose its value from one work to another. The first example with the advertiser is an interesting occurrence and one that goes against basic laws of supply and demand. So how do you determine and keep the value of your content, whether its footage, photos or any other digital content or maximize the life and value of the content?

Some helpful tricks:

1. Update your work- You can always go back and tweak your content. Re-work an old project.

2. Find new clients and offer it in new markets. The Internet has made it easier than ever to find new clients and new markets where your content is fresh and still has a high value. Try locating advertisers in Japan, China or India if you have relevant content

3. Find new uses in different fields. If your content has been used in an advertisement, maybe it can be used in a film or a corporate project for example.

4. Cut up or increase the amount of content you offer. For example, if you have a clip that is 2 minutes try breaking it up and selling off pieces of it to interested parties or vice a versa.

5. Use Cutcaster's dynamic algorithm (subliminal marketing ;-) )

6. Shoot different variations of the similar selling content. If shots of cars winding around cliffs by the ocean are selling, use different types of cars, different types of lighting, different seasons, different angles etc.

7. Bundle the content in volumes that you have prepared or in "lightboxes" you can sell. Lightboxes are designed to help you get organized and are used to batch images or footage that you like or are similar together.

There are a few other tricks that we have analyzed for our Cutcaster algorithm that will help with pricing and take out a lot of the guessing game and work for those who would rather shoot then worry about how to offer their content.

What are some other good factors to look which can adversely affect the price of a piece of content or increase it?

Getty's Consumer Site- Jam'd

Wake up from your Cutcaster food coma. Looks like Getty has finally launched their Consumer website. They are calling it Jam'd or JAMD, I couldn't tell just yet but not sure what that refers to.

The headline says, "Million of images, tons to talk about." Obviously there are not a lot of things to talk about as they build up membership. We can all relate with that. Beside the normal bugs that come up with a new website (the first time page doesn't upload and images didn't upload in Internet Explorer) I found it a bit of a snoozer and very hard to navigate. Definitely didn't have anything innovative on it. Was this the big news we were all waiting for? What did you think?

Content our Buyers want

If you have footage, photos, animations or motion graphics similar to the examples below and you own the rights to them, upload the content and help satisfy some of the needs we have come across when reaching out to potential buyers. These topics and niches have been requested by our growing list of buyers.

Footage and photos that we want (in alphabetical order):

Animations: 3D background animations, 3D/2D motion graphics, background for text in DVD projects and menu systems, web graphics, promotional images and characters, etc.

Action Shots: People eating, working, playing, driving; things in motion or transit

Commercials: Spec commercials, pre and post roll ads, 15-30 seconds in length. All subject matter is welcome and will be listed under short film.

Concept Stock: Deep Hidden Meanings (DHM), images that represent emotions

Corporate Footage: Office shots, conference room shots, presentation shots, people in their work environment, etc.

Documentary/Short Films: All issues and topics

Geographic: Video and images of people and places around the world past, present and future; reels of specific locations, domestic and international

Healthcare: Administrative footage, imagery of healthcare providers and staff attending to administrative tasks in hospital/office settings, images of prescriptions such as pills, medicine, etc.

Historical/Archival: Images and video that capture a moment in history, archive footage

Journalism: News worthy images or video content of relevant issues around the world; local, national and international

Photography: Portraits, still-life, abstract, aerial shots, architecture, motion photography, photo journalism, satellite photography, infrared, cityscapes, travel photography

Rare Artifacts: Footage in King Tuts tomb, an archiaelogical digs, findings, etc. The more rare, the more downloads.

Religious/Spiritual: Footage of rituals, festivals, representative imagery, sermons, etc.

Specialty/Niche Footage: For example, firefighting, extreme fighting, extreme weather reels, hard to find captivating footage

Sports: skateboarding, Squash, mountain biking, ping pong, beer pong, soccer, karate, billiards, Championship ceremonies and shots (i.e. the winning shot), etc. Remember you need your releases.

We are building a high definition library and seeking HD or HDV footage or photos for almost any subject. If you have this content our buyers are interested. Please upload it to the marketplace for review.

Do you need a particular image or video? Post your requirements in the Project Request Forum! Cutcaster offers royalty free images, stock photos, stock footage and stock photography for advertising, publishing or web design.

What is Stock Footage and Photography?

Stock footage and photography is a set of ready video and images where you purchase the rights to use the image rather than assigning your own cameramen or photographers to shoot.

The main benefits of digital stock footage and photography include getting to see the final piece of content before you license the rights to use them and they can be licensed immediately.

Additionally, the cost for stock footage and photography, specifically Royalty Free content are much lower compared to assignment or commissioned work. This saves you the cost of hiring the model(s), photographer, location, props, art direction and editing costs.

Writer's Strike Anthem

Because every strike needs a good rap.


Enjoy this for a Friday break and have a great Holiday weekend with your families and friends.

Written and Performed by : Writer Boi

Directed and edited by : David Schlussel

Shot by : Robert W. Swanson

Amazing Public Domain Images

One of the few photographs to show the Earth in its entirety, The Blue Marble was shot on December 7, 1972 from Apollo 17 as it left orbit on the way to the moon. Officially, the photograph is credited to the entire crew, but it was mostly likely to have been taken by Jack Schmitt using a 70mm Hasselblad. It was the last time that humans have been high enough to shoot the entire Earth in one frame and is one of the most widely distributed images in the world.
Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center

Photopreneur has a great write up on some public domain images that are simple outstanding. Many times when you see these images it means that someone has paid to enable you to see that image as photopreneur points out, whether it is the publisher, the ad company or the buyer.

Photopreneur points out that, "when it comes to photography, some of the best things really are free. That’s because copyright only lasts as long as the owner’s lifetime plus around seventy years so many images have fallen into the public domain, and also because one of the biggest sources of images is the US government. And because the government serves the citizens, the citizens own the images."


This photograph of a jellyfish was shot by Henry Kaiser of the National Science Foundation under the Ross Sea ice in October 2005. It's a pretty amazing example of a free image.
Photography: Henry Kaiser




The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Fotolia Moves away from Micro-Stock, Incorporates Traditional Collections

Fotolia has debuted what it’s calling the “Infinite Collection.” This is a set of 15,000 agency-distributed photographs that would normally be found on expensive stock photography sites but are now being sold for as little as $20 on Fotolia. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Will this force higher end stock photography sites to lower their prices? Is this a form of price discrimination because Fotolia won't list the collections they are getting the photos from? Are the photographers whose photos are being sold aware that they are being sold this way by ?

I'll be watching this development closely to see how well they can incorporate this offering into their business model and client base.

Interview with Lane Hartwell

Q&A with Lane Hartwell in "Going to the mat for photo copyrights":

Shankland: What do you think of watermarking to address the issue?

Hartwell: A great idea. Sites like Flickr need to employ an automatic watermarking system. The site I am moving my work to, Photoshelter, allows me to set that all up in advance and I never have to deal with it again. It´s applied to every photo.

Shankland: How much did you bill the Richter Scales?

Hartwell: They haven´t received the invoice yet. I can tell you that I used Fotoquote and calculated the invoice based on usage, the market where the photograph is to be used and various other factors, which are the typical parameters photographers use when pricing an image.

Sharmeen Obaid

Just received this letter from Sharmeen Obaid, who has been doing some unbelievable work around the world and is married to an Exeter and UPenn guy. Two schools close to my heart ;-)

Dear Friends

Many of you have expressed interest in the upcoming elections in
Pakistan....As i mentioned earlier i will be writing for PBS Frontline World
throughout the month...

My next Dispatch is up:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/12/pakistan_the_ot.html

Also if you haven't voted for the International Museum of Women's
Imagining Ourselves Project, please do so when you have a minute- There are
some fantastic stories out there:

http://imaginingourselves.imow.org/pb/Conversation.aspx?id=94&lang=1

All my best,
Sharmeen

Content Requirements

Due to some issues we are having with cropping photographs instead of re-sizing them during the thumbnail generation in our backend, we have instituted some content requirements. In the meantime we are working on coming up with a solution that will re-size and not crop images when they are displayed on the site.

The minimum file size should be 1600 x 1200 pixels if possible. Make sure you upload the largest file size that you have. For example, 300 dpi 5" x 7" is ideal. A lot of the graphic designers we have spoken to can’t use 640 x 480 images.

The only formats that Cutcaster can currently encode are: 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AVI, BMP, DV, Flash Video, Flash, GIF, JPEG, MP3, MPEG, MPEG-4, PNG, QuickTime, TIFF, WAV and Windows Media formats.

If you want your content to have a Cutcaster watermark to protect it, which we recommend, the following source formats can have a watermark overlaid to them:
BMP
JPG
PNG

The following source formats can be read by the Cutcaster thumbnail encoding server, and we can still license them to others however a watermark can not be applied:
TIFF
GIF

We do not support thumbnail generation or re-encoding to alternative sized images for the following source formats:
PSD
EPS
TXT
3GPP
3G2
MP4
MP3
MOV (H.264 Codec)
AAC

Video Watermarking Support
The following video source formats can have a watermark applied:
AVI
MPEG
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
MOV
WMV

Watermarking can be applied to the following output formats:
3GPP
3G2
AVI
MPEG
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
MOV
WMV
FLV

We are sorry but at this time, Cutcaster does not support watermarking or transcoding for the following source formats:
FLV
SWF
3GPP
3G2

We wil continually update this list as we build out our capabilities. Let us know if there is anything that we should focus all our attention on or move to the front of the line.
Thanks

Writers on strike moving to Web

The debate over how to pay writers and split the royalties when their work goes online has been a heated discussion we are sure. I'm sure it is difficult to come up with a fair and agreeable payout, when no one is really sure what the revenues could be or what the future holds for digital content on the web. No big studio or network wants to be locked into a percentage deal or terms, when they have no idea themselves how the content could be used and how much they can make off it. We covered the writer strike before and continue to follow the story today.

So what is a writer supposed to do during this downtime? Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, writers are pursuing deals to develop shows for the web and looking for money to facilitate this creation of content. The development makes us think about what happened in the newspaper industry, when writers during the first dot-com era launched news sites like Salon.com and the like. It's probably not a far fetch that we will see a new wave of companies started in the same manner and an explosion of content created by these writers for video sites on the web.

So is there money out there for a writer to tap into so they can write shows and craft deals of their own. Jim Breyer, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners and a director at Facebook, told the LA Times that it's "likely" the firm will put some of its cash into some "screenwriter/content-oriented companies" next year.

Stealing Images from Flickr "Quote of the Day"

"After debating this for the past few weeks, I’ve decided to make my entire flickr stream private. My images are being stolen and used in ways that I am not comfortable with on an almost weekly basis, sometimes several times in a week. I have blogged about it, talked about it here on my stream, and yet people still feel that my creative property is theirs to take and do with as they please."

--Photographer and interesting person, Lane Hartwell, posting on flickr on her decision to make her photos private due to theft. Her image of Valleywag's Owen Thomas appeared in The Richter Scale's video Here comes another bubble, which was just removed fron YouTube due to a "copyright claim by a third party."

Here is an update to the story.

How to Get Paid for your Flickr Photos

Buyers are more and more going to Flickr and contacting photographers directly to negotiate sales and the licensing of photos on the site. It's happening. The lack of a great "consumer licensing vehicle" is a major issue in this photography and video licensing marketplace and that is what Cutcaster is trying to create. The combination of the traditional licensing world with a more Web 2.0 community and feel.

The problem with using Flickr to do this is that it's not designed to be a platform to legally license content so you lack the protections that a site like Cutcaster provides you. Plus there is no checks and balances to make sure the person who uploaded the photo is the actual owner and that falls back onto the buyer. Plus without watermarks you can have your photos easily ripped off.

I'm glad to see that people aren't just ripping images off Flickr and not crediting or paying the true owners. It's good to see that photo buyers are reaching out over Flickr to the creators to legally license and use their work.

If interested check out Photopreneur's write up on the same topic.

Comparison of Microstock Referral Programs

Everyone wants to make a little extra money while doing what they love. The questions always is, how do you find those ways? Referral programs are one way Microstock videographers and photographers can pad their overall earnings with not a lot of work and a great way for Microstock websites to get new members and content.

In one of Lee Torren's last blog entries he compares the different affiliate and referral programs found at the leading microstock sites and outlines which ones are the best value for trying to make extra money while submitting to these sites. We have said it on here before but Lee Torrens does a really great job over at Microstock Diaries and we have really learned a lot from our conversations with him and his very educational blog which maps his experience in the microstock world.

Here is a chart he created but for a complete rundown on all the info he aggregated check out the post on his site.

Website -> Deal for Buyers -> Deal for Contributors -> Statistics -> Enrollment

iStockPhoto , $10 once off, NO, NA, Accept agreement

Shutterstock, 20% up to $50, $0.03, Full, Automatic

Dreamstime, 10%, 10%, Some, Automatic

Fotolia, 15%, 10%, Full Automatic

BigStockPhoto, 35% 1st purchase, $5 once off, Some, Automatic

CanStockPhoto, 10% up to $50, $5 per 50 sales, Some, Automatic

123rf, 15% for 1 year, $0.03 for 6 months, Full, Automatic

StockXpert, 10%, NO, Full, Application & review

LuckyOliver, $5 once off, $1 once off, None, Automatic


It's a great read for anyone trying to earn more money from referring new members to these sites and also a good comparison of the different programs that are out there. It's definitely going to help us in choosing our affiliate program here at Cutcaster. Hey Lee, do you think it is necessary for a site to reward a referrer for both buyers and sellers they send to a site?

Credits- Photo downloaded from MorgueFile and is the copyright of Cohdra

Write up over at Kino-Eye

Thanks for the shout out from Kino-Eye, one of our favorite blog and not just because David Tamés wrote about us. He wrote a piece about Cutcaster and bid4vid. If you want to know why David chose the name Kino Eye click here.

User Generated Content coming to a phone near you

User-generated content will make up one-quarter of the world's entertainment within five years, according to Nokia's "A Glimpse of the Next Episode" report. And much of it will come from young mobile users.

"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular,'" said Mark Selby, vice president at Nokia. "The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."

Efforts to facilitate and encourage mobile content delivery and creation are in the works. People who are producing this content will need to continue to find the distribution channels and monetization mechanisms out there that are best suited for the work they are creating and maximize their contents value. We will have to wait to see who comes out on top.

Guest Blogger - Drew Bennett

My name is Drew and I am the author of The BenSpark. I was invited to write a guest post on the Cutcaster blog. My topic is the low cost ways that you can create content to enhance your blog. Personally, I usually skip blog posts that do not include images. They bore me. But if your post also includes an image, my eyes are going to be drawn to the image and I may look at your written content as well because of that image.

For almost three years now, I have been working on a personal project where I take a Photo-A-Day and post it to my blog. I have used a number of cameras as well as software programs to accomplish this work. I have also used a number of photo hosting platforms to host those photos. And in the end, I have also widgetized my daily photo stream so that others can host my content on their blogs. Getting started with photos and video on your blog is very, very simple.

Things you need:

* Digital Camera
* Photo Editing Software
* Photo Hosting Platform

Digital Camera - First things first, you are going to need a digital camera. Digital cameras have dropped dramatically in price and as each new and improved version comes out the previous versions drop even lower in price. Here's a secret. Unless you are printing images in extremely large formats or going into professional photography you don't need the latest and greatest gear. You can pick up last year's model and it will be perfect for digital online content. So if you are shooting just for the web let's say that $100 would be a good price point. As far as what camera is the best I cannot speak to that. I can tell you about the gear that I have used in the past and what I use currently.

For years I had a Sanyo Xacti C4 camera, but it was much more than just a 4MP (mega pixel) camera. This was a camera and video camera in one and it recorded video straight to an SD card. This was something I bought 4 years ago when this wasn't the norm with cameras today and I paid through the nose. Now nearly every digital point and shoot camera has an option for shooting video included as well. So for around $100 you can get a decent camera that also doubles as a video camera. I have a point and shoot 7.1MP Canon SD800 and a 10MP Nikon D80 DSLR. I shoot with the intent of either selling my photos or having them be of high enough quality for print. However, most of the time I print only 4 X 6, the average size of the basic consumer and you certainly don't need 10MP to do that. The photo will look better the higher the MP but you don't need it, especially for web content. When I post to the web, I take those large images and format them to a much smaller size. Remember that with web images you are going for a fast load time so the images file size should be small.

When I take a photo, I edit it in Adobe Photoshop Elements and when I create a video, I use Adobe Premiere Elements. However, I am still using an old version of both programs. I haven't even upgraded to the latest and greatest. You don't need the latest and greatest to edit your images and send them to the web. A quick Amazon search of "inexpensive image editing software" and "inexpensive digital cameras" brought back many solutions for either the pro, enthusiast or easy user. There are many options. Set your budget and buy the most you can within that budget. Also look for packages where you get the camera and image editing software together.

Image Editing Software - You can buy the image editing software with all the bells and whistles like Photoshop CS3 or you can go the more moderate route and buy the consumer version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements (version 6.0 is the latest, I'm on 4.0) or you can go the super simple easy route and download a free program like Picasa. Let's stick with the theme of adding digital content to the web in the most inexpensive way so let's talk about the basic things your image editing software needs.

Cropping - Cropping is the most important feature in my eyes. To me, "life is how you crop it". Suppose you took a fantastic picture of your dog but also in the picture you get some goof making faces. Rather than junking the image as being lost you can easily crop out that goofy character. Cropping is a way of selecting a portion of the image to become the main image. I have a good eye but I almost always crop my images in some way. Your image editing software should allow you to crop.

Remove Red Eye - You're going to get images where your subjects look possessed. You can fix that with a quick red eye removal. Your software should include that as an option.

Image sizing - I usually do my image sizing, when I crop. I use the size of 450px (pixels) x 350px (pixels) at 96 dpi (dots per inch) for my images on my blog. This way the images end up being quite small and I know exactly how large the image will look when displayed. So many people upload their images unedited and then get giant images blown out on their blogs. Having control over the image size is also crucial. You want to know exactly where that image will fall on your page. Make sure your images are not wider than the width of the content column. With Photoshop elements, I can set my cropping tool to crop an image to be 450px (pixels) x 350px (pixels) at 96 dpi (dots per inch). You can also avoid this by using a photo hosting site that takes your images and gives you multiple sizes to display on your blog.

Photo Hosting Platforms - Once you have taken and edited your images you are going to want to host them somewhere so that you can add them to your blog quickly and easily. Some blogging platforms allow you to upload your image directly to your blog and that is okay. I prefer to post my images to a photo hosting site and then copy and paste the image into my blog post. There are so many different hosting platforms and I am on a bunch of them. I usually upload my Photo-A-Day to Buzznet, Flickr and Zooomr.

Why all three? Well, for one thing it gets my content in front of many sets of eyes. Each time I post an image I can tag it or label it with keywords that people can search on. If I post an image of my cat I would tag that image with the keywords "cat", "pet", "tuxedo", "shorthair". That way when someone is looking for shorthaired tuxedo cats as pets they could easily find my uploaded photos of my two cats, Duncan and Oliver. I also add a link to my Photo-A-Day blog post on each of the descriptions on my uploaded images. This way I now have three links to my blog post (one on each platform). There are people who strictly use photo hosting platforms and are loyal to one or the other, by posting my images to multiple platforms I am able to put my content in front of many diverse audiences.

Some photo hosting platforms are free and some are for pay, if you can afford a pro account on a hosting platform like Flickr buy it, if you want all the best functions without having to pay for them then try hosts that have unlimited uploads like Zooomr. And if you decide to go the Picasa route with free image editing software you can also upload your images directly from Picasa to your blog.

The Internet is a full on multimedia experience. When you blog, think about providing that experience to your readers. Don't just give them flat text, engage your audience with images, video and sound. Oh yeah, I haven't even gotten into videos and how they can enhance your blogs... Maybe next time around...

Drew writes five blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also takes at least one photo every single day and posts it to his BenSpark Blog. You can visit him at The BenSpark, BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo, Flatwater Tech or The Wired Kayaker and Read To Me, Dad

Philippe Lemarchand - Zabriskie Prod

I met with Philippe Lemarchand this past weekend on his week-long trip to the Big Apple. Philippe is a photojournalist and film maker, who is currently living in Paris and building up his film production company Zabriskie Prod with partner Cyrille de La Motte Rouge.

Their company is really on the forefront of using/creating video for institutions, individuals or companies looking to beef up their websites' content, appeal and image in general. They really do part consulting, part flash development and part video creation and delivery based on what they find during their discovery consulting phase so they are trying to be a full, one stop shop for those looking to get a video presence online.

An interesting side bit...The company mirrors the founders philosophy of playing an active role in society and pushing higher environmental standards and social values. Take a look at his site and expect big things from this dynamic "green" duo.

How Cutcaster will protect the producer who submits to our Marketplace?

Cutcaster is uncompromising when it comes to providing submitters with secure, trustworthy uploading, promoting and distribution services for their media files. Protecting our submitters content is one of the highest priorities we have at Cutcaster while maintaining a secure marketplace that has the trust of all participants. Most submitters of content, who are looking to sell/license it to others, are fearful that their footage or images will end up being used without their permission or being paid for it. A lot of people fear that their content will end up on YouTube or on someones compact disc that they are selling on eBay. We want to STRESS AND ENSURE our submitters that we have one of the highest levels of backend security. What are some ways to protect your submitters of content?

1. We will watermark your content and display your content in a lower resolution.

2. We will work tirelessly to identify any footage or image theft and make our users aware of it at once.

3. If you want to embed a file into your content to track it and see how it is used we can help you do that.

4. We will throw out unscrupulous buyers who use a piece of content in ways that aren’t allowed under the content license agreement or attempt to steal your work.

5. We will post up offenders of our rules in our Wall of Shame area so people and our competitors know who to look out for. We don't mind working with our competitors as long as it helps everyone in the market.

6. We will work with our buyers to understand and let submitters know as best we can how your content is being used.

7. We will monitor our server logs so we can fish out suspicious behavior when people are searching for your content.

8. We will monitor all our content for trademark, copyright and clearance issues.

9. We are working on providing some feedback options like what they have in eBay.

10. your suggestions

How else can we help submitters of content to our site protect their work while at the same time making it available in the Cutcaster marketplace?

SciVee

Here is an interesting content source with what we believe has great potential called Scivee.tv (in beta) that hits the academic-scientific community. Upload your research content for publication.

SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Please see our Partners page to learn more about them. SciVee allows scientists to communicate their work as a multimedia presentation incorporated with the content of their published article. Other scientists can freely view uploaded presentations and engage in virtual discussions with the author and other viewers. SciVee also facilitates the creation of communities around specific articles and keywords. Use this medium to meet peers and future collaborators that share your particular research interests.

Video Production and ownership of rights

What rights do production house retain over the content they produce? Do they ever share ownership or have it outright? What are other ways video production houses could put the fruits of their labor to work? It seems that a lot of them don't own the rights to license footage they shoot but can only use them for promotional work on their sites. What rights would you like to retain if you were these companies and how much leverage do you have in negotiating the contracts for the rights? Can these houses sell or license any of their footage? Would they be interested in a service like the one that Cutcaster will provide to license their clips/footage to others in film making or advertising?

I've noticed that many of them produce commercials, documentaries, feature length films, TV episodes, corporate videos, stock footage etc. etc. What are the different ways these companies could sell their content to add extra revenue to the companies bottom line? Is it worth the hassle for the to upload their clips to stock sites? How can these companies work with a company like Cutcaster to carve a new marketplace out in the future?

The Naked Founder

You gotta love Chris MacAskill, co founder of SmugMug and his famous almost-naked motorcycle ride. He was "double dog dared" to do it by his employees. For those of you that don't know, that is one step above "double toucan dare you" which Toucan Sam made popular in the late 80s for Fruit Loops, the cereal.

DRM Free...

This was from an interesting Gizmodo article linked through Surf Lizard...apparently, Amazon "plans to give away one billion MP3s with an upcoming Pepsi/Super Bowl giveaway." According to the article, this move comes on the heels of Wal-Mart pressuring a major label to start selling their whole collection in the mp3 format so that Wal-Mart could then add the tracks to their online store. Regardless, the title of the article was "DRM Deathwatch" and what interests me is that audio was sure to be the medium to go DRM-free first (ahead of video), and we're finally starting to see major retailers supporting that trend. So will video follow the same trajectory? The unraveling of DRM is certainly starting and it would seem that certain music and video sites would potentially need to reevaluate their business models in light of this.

Thanks for the laughs, Jane!

Enjoy and have a good laugh. My sister just made a total elf of the rest of my family. Check it out by clicking the link here.

I got the ladies body, while my mom, to my right, got a man's body followed by my little sister, Mary, and my dad bringing up the rear.

Updates on Cutcaster Site Development

We have been improving our site daily and getting a bunch of feedback from early users. We are building a testing environment and have streamlined a lot of our development so things should move more smoothly and faster now. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up as to what we are looking at improving next and fixing in the meantime. These features will be updated in the testing environment and moved to the site in the next revision in a few days. I'm not sure if we will have all of them ready to go but here are a few we are working on.

1. Registration process- We will get rid of the invite access so people can move around after they sign up and don't need to wait for us to up their clearance. That was a pain.

2. Upload page, upload 2 page- We are working on integrating the metadata we collect into our mySQL database better, ghosting out fields that you don't need to see on the upload 2 page which can be confusing i.e. audio fields still showing when uploading a video file, and determining which the required fields are so we can properly release and offer your content. I'm really excited to get this working.

3. The Media details page- It will now only show what is relevant to file and what the buyers needs to make an informed purchase.

4. Clipfolders functionality- Build out the clipfolder capacity so buyers can organize footage and photos.

5. Improve our review process so we can review and release your files faster to the marketplace.

6. Get the studio commenting up and working so people can leave comments on your pages.

7. Setting up Content Requirements- Right now images are not displaying correctly because if the file dimensions are too small, under 1400 x 1000, the image is being cropped. We are working on a solution for this as well as adding a watermark to images.

8. Bulk Upload which supports IPTC metadata collection- If you are a photographer you probably know what this means. But the bulk upload will make it easier to upload content to the site in a time efficient manner.

Let us know if there is anything you want worked on over the next month and we will take a look at it. Thanks to the tech team for working on these important sections.

BrightQube Series A- Rumor

I'm hearing BrightQube is close to finalizing their Series A round, which is in the neighborhood of 1-2 million. Not confirmed yet on the amount but this is on the heels of their Angel round, which wasn't closed that long ago. I'll see what other details I can find but looking forward to big things from Lee C. and BrightQube.

What price is fair for your photos or videos?

Do you ever wonder if you could be making more on your content? Or where there are more buyers for your content? Are you even able to reach these people. Does it ever bother you that you could be overpaying or searching too long for the content you are buying?

One of Cutcaster's mission is to find the correct price for your content and explain to you better how the entire digital content marketplace works. We call it a "Bloomberg for Digital Media." A place where all information on the market can be accessed and level the playing field between perception and reality. To start, Cutcaster wants to tell you who the buyers and sellers are, what they are creating or looking for and what they are willing to sell it for or pay for the right to use it. This should be available to anyone in the marketplace. Not just the people with big budgets and consultants to tell them what to do. We want to create a complete transaction history to help people understand this marketplace that is changing many of the old characteristics of media.

If you want to learn more sign up at Cutcaster and we can help you price or pay the right price for your media.

Becoming Brian O'Kelley

I met up with Brian O'Kelley, another good Irishman, earlier tonight at Starbucks in Soho and chatted with him about his life as an entrepreneurs and his experience raising investment. I met Brian only a few weeks before at one of the Tech and Media brunches and was impressed by his knowledge of how to start a business and then how to exit a business;-) Brian had a ton of great advice tonight but something that I walked away from the meeting with was "Launch, Launch, Launch" which is what my boy Blue, I mean Paul Graham says in number 8 here. Even though Brian is a Princeton grad, we promise as Penn grads, to not hold it against him ;-) We still aren't even sure Princeton grads think of Penn as their rival but maybe just in basketball and total number of students from New Jersey;-)

Having only just returned from his travels around the globe (see picture above of Brian loving life in Sydney) for business mixed with a bit of nightlife pleasure, Brian is gearing up for his next big venture called AppNexus, which is changing the way people build web-scale software (but it's a stealth for now). Watch out Amazon and you other wannabes. Keep an eye out for his new company after it launches post January 1st. We are expecting bigger things after his successful run at Right Media where he was the CTO and helped to sell the company to Yahoo last year. Here's an article about the Right Media - Yahoo merger.

Top Trends in Search in 2007

It’s that time of year again for the major search engines to release their top search queries of the year. Here is a look at Yahoos' results. If you click on the image above a larger version of it will appear. Google will release their results later this month.

UPDATE:
Here are Googles top search terms which were released on the Today Show. Thank god for no more Britney.
1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith

RED ONE Camera

At the Open Social Brunch this Sunday I met Emery Wells, who is shooting film using the RED ONE and writing about his experience over on his blog Project Red. What is Project Red you ask? Project Red is gathering artists and craftsmen from around the world to participate in an open source media project shot with the RED ONE in the name of art, science, and education. We’ll be chronicling our production, documenting our workflow, and uploading our source plates and project files to share with the world!

Emery Wells is co-founder of Project Red and a freelance producer/director in NYC. I spent a good amount of time yesterday talking to him about his background in Visual FX and workflow consulting he is doing. He is one of the first people to receive a RED camera and is committed to introducing the new RED workflow into the hearts and minds of clients across the globe.

Emery, let's see some of that content you are shooting up on Cutcaster ;-)

Open Social Sunday

This past weekend was officially the first Open Social Sunday held by Hilary Rowland at Bobo, the en Vogue eatery over in the West Village. After ironing out a few issues with the restaurant, which seemed surprisingly stubborn and not that accommodating to simple requests, which I attribute to them just opening for brunch two weeks ago, members of the New York media and tech community sat down for a few spicy bloody marys, some croque monsieur's and some business card swapping. It's really intersting to hear all the paths that people take and how creative they get with their jobs. I'm always impressed.

The brunch hosts a wide variety of people. Everyone from an acupuncturist (sat next to me, the person most afraid of needles probably there and had me squirming the whole time talking about it), a freelance music blogger/great photographer, a film consultant/entrepreneur, an art rep for a very cool pop/expressionist artist, a venture capital guy from IACI, the SocialDiva (got it right this time ;-)), the New Faces CEO, a dealmaker from the UK Trade and Investment Department, the founder of an mobile based email question service and an editor from Conde Nast with a digital media background.

Once again the gathering was a very enjoyable event and I met a bunch of very interesting people. Two thumbs up again for Hilary.

Up in Smoke-Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick out

In one of the stranger stories around the online video space today, Jakob Lodwick, one of the Vimeo founders, was fired yesterday from IACInteractive, the parent company of his video sharing community website.

This is how he put it over on his blog yesterday:

As of an hour ago, I am no longer affiliated with IAC/InterActiveCorp/Connected Ventures/Vimeo.

Goodbye to everyone at CV.

And now, I will turn off my cell phone for the evening and catch up with everyone later!


Seems a bit abrupt. Even Jakob's girlfriend, Julia, was shocked that he had left Vimeo or at least played it up. Julia wrote on her blog that she couldn't believe she found out about Jakob leaving his job from his blog. Just a few days before she described Vimeo as "Jakob's baby" on her blog. Sounds like he might need Brittany's lawyers if he wants to get that baby back ;-)

I don't know the details of his departure but it's been a really weird story so far and pictures of Jakob with a bong in hand probably don't make the IACI guys feel bad about the departure. Here is some press he got at TechCrunch which shows him holding his bong on his goodbye post over at his blog which he has since removed.

Jakob was a partner of Connected Ventures, whose members Josh, Zach and Ricky started three successful companies CollegeHumor, Busted Tees and Vimeo, all of which are now owned by IACI who bought CV last year. Co-founder Zach also recently left company.

A bit weird but to each their own. I am sure Jakob will do very well regardless and best of luck.

Moby Offers his Music for Free

Message from Moby:

hi,
i'll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, 'film music', is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.
you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that's generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you're looking for,
moby

We applauded this decision by Moby and look forward to speaking with him about helping him offer his music and support his charitable causes.

Arcade Fire Interactive Video

I went to high school with Win Butler of Arcade fire and today I stumbled across this cool interactive video that they put out for Neon Bible which was released earlier this year. Director Vincent Morisset and producers Jean-Luc Della Montagna and Nú Films hatched this interactive music video for Arcade Fire. Click around on the page with your mouse and watch what you can do. It's not over the top or too overly complicated, but it is an engaging sidshow to the great music (if that is your taste), and a impressive example of the marriage of interactive digital content with a refined sensibility.

Review over at KillerStartups

I got an email yesterday from Gonzalo Arzuaga that we were reviewed over at Killerstartups.

"We wanted to let you know your company got reviewed in our blog KillerStartups.com.

There's only two ways for your startup to make it to our blog:
1) Any of our registered readers submitted it
2) Our editorial team found your company through our daily scan of the 'Top 100' blogs that write about Internet and technology.

You can read the review about your company here.

Regards,

Gonzalo Arzuaga
Co-founder – KillerStartups, Inc.
http://www.KillerStartups.com

Thanks for the shout out and if you do check it out, please vote for us by clicking on the "Killers" icon on the left hand side of the blog Title.

Some Cutcaster Coverage

Over at Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB), they have highlighted our site. YEEHAW. Since we are still in alpha and they are reporting on sites in beta we might have jumped the gun a bit but thanks to them for posting about us. To learn more about the site, check out our about us page.

Fotolog’s $90 Million Acquisition by Hi-Media Completed

Hi-Media, operator of one of Europe’s largest ad networks and micro-payment services, completed its acquisition today of Fotolog. It only took a few months and a few large legal bills I bet. The French Internet company had previously announced the deal last August but it is completed as of now.

Fotolog CEO John Borthwick is moving on to his incubator/investment fund Betaworks.

Breaking News

Corbis on the verge of Profitability. CEO Gary Shenk mused "I have the moment planned when I can send Bill Gates the first dollar." Bravoooo.

And in other news, Corbis laid off 3/4 of its staff today to get there.

Corbis offers Bloggers Ads with Corbis Images embedded in them ;-)

Corbis, Mr. Billy Gate's stock photography house, will allow users to download images for their blogs from its website free of charge. Butttttt.....

And there is always a but in these things. The catch is that each photo which is downloaded will either include an ad overlay on part of the image, or embedded advertising that pops up when a Web user runs a cursor over the picture. Each photo that is downloaded will also come with an embedded banner advertisement beneath the photo. The service will allow people with blogs to add copyrighted images legally, said CEO Gary Shenk at the Reuters Media Summit in NYC on Tuesday. The service is in beta testing right now.

Audience vs. Content

Which is more important? When building a website that is supported by both a strong community audience and a diverse body of content, what element do you need first to get growth going and then what do you need over time to keep it going?

Do you need quality content first to attract the audiences and build community or do you need the audiences to attract the better content and content creators? Which one should lead? Which one is more important?

This will then lead to a discussion on the "hub and spoke" distribution model and the "call and response" model that we will talk about in future blogposts. Discuss.

Free Photoshop Plugins & Filters

Hope some of these freebies can help you out. Take a look and let us know which ones you think are the best.

8bf Plugins - Here you get FREE AAA 8bf PLUGINS for PhotoFilter Studio and other photo editors. Windows only

Amphisoft - Free plug-in filters for Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, Photoshop Elements, JASC and
Corel PaintShop Pro, PhotoPaint and other image editors for Windows.

Cybia Plug-In Filters - Check this freeware filters pack out which includes 6 filters

DCFilters - They have large selection of filters including ones for bricks, edger etc..

Deep Paint 2.0 - This site offers a realistic painting experience for digital artists and graphic professionals. Very cool site

Des Filtres - You have to be a French speaker but there looks to be over 100 filters that are free.

Digital ArtShop - Large number of filters and plugins for you.

Flaming Pear - This is a link to the download page. The page includes filters and plugins, including Creative Pack, Mr.Contrast, Hue and Cry, LunarCell, Flood, Cool Designer Plugins, Solar Cell, Flexify, Photography Pack, Polymerge, Glitterato, India Ink, Tesselation, Patterns, Free Plugins, and more.

Free Photoshop Plugins - This site has a few free Photoshop plugins

GraphicXtras - A number of plugins for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and other programs.

GoPog - Filters include Mono Renditionizer, Variable Blurrinator, Mono Renditionizer, Lab Overlayer, and more.

Harry’s Filters - Harry’s Filters is a free Photoshop-compatible plugin. It has up to 69 different image effects.

Little Ink Spot - Include chalkoholic for a chalk effect on your photos

Luce - Light effects.

Mehdi Plugins - Free Photoshop plugins include Absolute Color Blots, Contrast Balance, Color MegaMix, and more

MV’s Plugins - A number of Photoshop compatible plugins

Photoshop Filters Factory - Around 400 free Photoshop filters.

Photoshop Scripts Plugins - For all you Spanish speakers here is your site with freeware filters.

Photo-Plugins - These seem to be high quality Photoshop plugins including these plugins

Richard Roseman - Worth checking out.

Vector Plugins - Need to pull out your Japanese for this page but the plugins are still usable if you speak English.

Let us know which ones you like and we should include.

TV Guide announces Online Video Awards winners

TV Guide announced the winners in 18 categories for its inaugural Online Video Awards. Is it me or are a lot of the winners of this year Online Video Awards dominated by large networks?
Even among the nominees, many of the major broadcast and cable networks were represented along with other entertainment sites including Funnyordie (my favorite is Pearl the landlord which if you haven't seen you must), SuperDeluxe and YouTube. The winners were chosen by fans on TVGuide with over 1.75 million votes cast, and by TV Guide editors. I'm not sure how their votes were weighted.

Congrats to all the winners!

Holiday Gift Idea

Our friend, Thomas Laupstad, is taking his amazing Norwegian photos to the Big Time and putting together a 2008 calendar for all those that need help planning out their week while looking at great photos. He only recently took up photography with his Olympus camera and is pretty prolific about putting out his weekly "Shots from Norway" email. The calendar consists of 12 pictures that he has hand picked to represent each month of the year and from receiving his photos I can tell you that this could make a great holiday gift or make you happy that you are not in Norway during March ;-).

Check out Thomas's Cafepress shop to buy the calendar for $24.99.

Videos that add value...

In yet another addition to the growing number of sites that offer "productive" video content, including instructional videos (SuTree), etc...Emily Chang's eHub had a quick note on a new health video site called BeYOU.tv. The content offering is self-explanatory and the site is in beta, worth checking out if something like yoga is your thing. More importantly though, the question I want to pose is whether these new instructional video sites need to remain separate destinations, or can their content be amalgamated and distributed via a central marketplace (um...like Cutcaster)? Clearly each site can form separate distribution relationships with the Brightcoves of the world, but can their content exist on its own or is the website and what it offers (community aspect, look-and-feel, etc) necessary to sell the videos?

Shawn Mortensen's New Book

Shawn Mortensen has a great new book out. You may recognize a lot of his photographs.

Over the last fifteen years, Shawn Mortensen has photographed cutting-edge culture-makers while also revealing the gritty reality of urban street life and the world's political climate. Truly with his finger on the pulse, Mortensen took photographs of the "in crowd" before they were the in crowd. His subjects range from celebrities such as Gwen Stefani, Marcello Mastroianni, and Tupac Shakur to contemporary artists like Raymond Pettibon, Brice Marden, and Francesco Clemente. Yet these portraits are juxtaposed with haunting photo essays on the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico; the ghettos of Jamaica; and the landscape of Mongolia—often with startling results.

We have really enjoyed some of his cool work and its worth taking a look at his site when you get some time.

Thanks JB Mockus!

Thanks JB for all your feedback and suggestions. Our site is built and updated with knowledge and insight from people like you. We really appreciate your help and eyes.

JB is updating his companies site, nStreams, a web development and computer services company located in Bend, Oregon, but when it is ready you can check it out here. Thanks again and keep the feedback coming in addition to the great pictures ;-)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hope everyone had a great weekend with their loved ones and got back to their home safely. The next few weeks are going to be very busy getting ready for the end of the year and the start of a new one. We're looking forward to a good push over at the Cutcaster site and continuing the discussion here on the Cutcaster blog.

Writer's Strike

Who can believe that this writers strike is still going on? It seems like its been going on for a whlie now and I'm not really sure why they can't come to a solution that is fair for everyone. All I can say is I hope this moves talent and content over to the web where the creators have more control over their content, distribution channels and can make more money by cutting out the middlemen in a lot of these agreements.

Anyone else have any thoughts on it?

BrightQube Video

Anyone have any experience with BrightQube who can share? This video from PDN PhotoPlus 2007's shows an interviews with Lee Corkran of BrightQube. He spoke with Inside Digital Photo TV's host, Scott Sheppard and gives us a brief overview.

He says "we are not looking for the buyer to change the way that they search for images but we're ultimately changing how they find images." Not a bad pitch and one I think will resonate. Corken says this a few minutes in, when highlighting the advance text search and then display. Interesting selling point and I think a good point to use with potential buyers.

If you think that stock photography is going the Getty/Corbis or microstock direction then BQ might have an opening with a novel User Interface...Time will tell.

Sony BMG and Yahoo get Cozy Over Produced Content

TechCrunch reported earlier that "Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed, in exchange for a slice of Yahoo’s advertising revenue, to let Yahoo’s users upload videos and music clips containing its produced content.

The deal comes just over a year since Sony made a very similar agreement with Google that also entailed the release of “thousands” of music videos on Google Video (and, soon after, YouTube as well). While Google has actually secured distribution deals with all four major labels by now, this deal is Yahoo’s first and it does not suggest that Sony will actively release produced content onto Yahoo Video.

Yahoo has also suggested that it will begin using “video identification and filtering technology” by early 2008, which sounds similar to the technology deployed by Google last month.

Yahoo Video, while a fraction of YouTube’s size in terms of users, comes in at second place among all video-sharing sites."

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is to being with the ones you love and to taking a much needed respite this Thanksgiving weekend. There is a lot to be thankful and it's important to always recognize that fact which can sometimes be overlooked during the rush of work and life in general. I wanted to wish everyone a great and safe Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be here in New York City and will be on email sparingly if anyone needs me. john AT cutcaster DOT com.

Interview with Alamy CEO James West

When you get a moment this is an interesting interview with James West, the CEO of Alamy. He is one of the younger leaders in this space and he definitely is innovative and not a part of the core group of old school folks. Take a look when you get a chance.

About the Image reported that, "The UK-based image portal, Alamy, recently took the unprecedented step for a privately held company of releasing its revenue figures to the public. The figures show a company on an impressive trajectory having grown total sales from US$129K in 2001 to US$24.2MM in 2006. Founded by its CEO James West and his uncle, Mike Fischer, in 1999, Alamy also manages to dedicate significant sums to medical research and invests in technology to reduce the company’s carbon footprint."

The article is interesting for Photographers and anyone following the business trends. They go over the effects of microstock, the falling dollar, editorial vs commercial client base and Alamy's Novel pricing approach which was still hush hush.

Working on the Kinks

Building a website can be very hard work. Trust us ;-) It's amazing how many little things you have to take into account. But its amazing to see things come together, hear peoples' reactions and get pumped up for any new features to roll out or when things are fixed and work right. Anyone who has built a website knows exaclty what i am talking about.

I just wanted to give everyone an update as to where we stand and what is coming. We are working on the site as fast as we can and fixing some of the bugs people have been finding. The homepage flash player will hopefully have the correct size thumbnails looping through. The photo spotlight on the lower left hand side of the homepage will be populated by thumbnails soon. Just working on how we want to display them. The upload process is smoothing out as we gear up for bulk upload and upload that supports IPTC data. I'm very excited about this. Also we are in discussions on a few large content partnerships that should help us immediately get traction with our contact list of potential buyers. While I can't talk about specifics I'm excited that a few of them will pan out.

Things we have almost finished and are still tweaking include our powerful pricing algorithm, which will be very helpful to people who are not entirely sure how to price their content and takes into account a huge amount of data to compute a valid market price. We are constantly tinkering with the algo and are making progress and learning a lot from it. We are working on our watermark for images. We have it set up for video at the moment but images is proving to be trickier ;-) Won't be long though.

While we haven't quite opened up the site to outside people we are inviting people and planning to move to just a registration process in just a little bit so you will be able to cruise around the site with no restrictions.

Things are looking good and only getting better.

Writers' Strike Accelerates Web Video's Move To TV

I think this is a interesting byproduct of the writer's strike and the ultimate dream of most producers of web content. The cross over to TV is a huge leap for all web video producers and highlights one of the major goals of this group. Fame has always trumpeted money and the crossover to a new medium is exactly what most want to accomplish.

NBC will start running the new Web show "Quarterlife," once passed up by rival ABC three years ago, on TV coming this January. The show was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of "thirtysomething" fame and hit the internet airwaves last week on MySpace.

The strike has forced networks to look elsewhere for content to replace their prime time shows and consider shows from the web that they once turned their nose up at. Will this last thought once the strike ends? With the quality of web shows getting better every year, its a natural progression for web video to move over to TV and something that I don't find that surprising. The web just provided producers a new and cheaper alternative to getting their content out there and thus we see a rise in the amount of content. So with or without the strike we were bound to see an increase in content in general and the natural progression and migration of tv to web and web to tv.

Tech / Media Peeps CEO Brunch

I had a nice brunch yesterday with plenty of interesting people who work in Tech, Media and the investment community at Gemma in the Bowery Hotel set up by Hilary Rowland of New Faces. It's fascinating to hear how each side views the other and how each other can work together to fill gaps in experience or knowledge the other side may be lacking. I was really impressed with some of the accomplishments and I was excited to see other people venturing out on their own and making a living doing what they love.

Some of the guest were from the Gathering, Right Media (sold to Yahoo), Getty Images, Conde Nast, Matrix Partners, Editor of an Aviation Magazine/Corbis rep'ed Fashion photographer, SocialDiva CEO, New Faces CEO, IACI Private Equity, and Paltalk. That just hit on the list of people who were sitting next to me ;-)

Make Money from your Photos

Has anyone heard of a new service called Photrade. It appears to offer an ad supported photo syndication service that brings photo monetization to a broader audience. Something that we are big believers in here at Cutcaster.

From what I can tell it is a free place to host your images but it can make you money. Its kind of like Flikr meets Mugshots meets Cafepress. We signed up for the side which is currently in closed beta.

Free Images, Clipart, Graphics, Banners and Icons Resources online

If you ever use images, clipart or animated images on your blog to liven it up a bit, but you want to use them legally and for free, here are some resources for you. Today's Cutcaster post will look at some of the free graphics and clipart resources available in the Web for anything graphics related and still provide some levels of protection:

FREE CLIPART RESOURCES
FreeGraphics.com
With it's extensive collection of free clipart, this well-designed site offers graphics in many categories, including animations, arrows, banners, buttons, fonts, interfaces, photos, templates, textures and wallpaper.

Hasslefreeclipart.com
An excellent graphics directory that includes various categories of free clipart. It also has reviews of other free graphics sites on the Web.

FREE ICONS & BANNERS
SmileyArena.com
With over 40,000 free smileys and other emot-icons, this well-organised site is great for free icons and banners.

Leo's IconArchive.com
Leo creates most of the artwork himself. This site has a cool collection of free useful and funny graphics, thousands of icons, caps, lines, flags, markers and bullets.

FREE PHOTO RESOURCES
FreeStockImages.com
This site has a vast selection of high-quality free photos and other stock images. It also allows photographers to upload their work here for free which is pretty normal but a nice feature. The categories are broken down for easier searching and include animals, architecture, backgrounds, digital art, nature, people, sports, as well as many more.

PixelPerfectDigital.com
Pixel Perfect Digital has a great collection of free high-resolution images, textures, backgrounds, illustrations, digital art, and stock photos, suitable for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

Remember when in doubt always provide credit where credit is due.

Looking for Free Audio Files

Here is a list of some places you can acquire free music for your projects. Most are offered under a Creative Commons agreement. Some Public Use

ccMixter.org - A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

TheFreeSoundProject - A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

The below are free Private Use but may allow some public use - check out individual sites/artists for complete details.

ArtistServer.com - helps out smaller bands.

Jamendo.com - A full-length albums for download. Pay the artists on a donation basis or just spread the word about them. Think what Radiohead did a few months back.

PodShow.com - Have a buddy Greg Mand working over there if you ever need some help. This is a site that will fill your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music.

SoundClick.com - A site for signed and unsigned bands that want to be promoted. Sound Click offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

Android DEMO

Android Demo
Uploaded by Cutcaster

If you haven't seen what Google is up to lately you have to check out the above clip from Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz, who discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo applications on the Android platform.

I like the idea at the end how they are offering 10 million dollars in prizes to developers. Cool way to call developers over to your platform.

Corbis Lays off more People

Corbis, the Bill Gates owned media company, announced that they have laid off 125 employees in an effort to streamline its customer service operations and sales team. According to people familiar with the situation, the layoffs were meant to streamline the sales effort and will entail shutting down some local offices (see Chicago, Montreal, Madrid, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Singapore and Melbourne) and replacing them with regional sales centers (see NY, London and soon to be China) and outside sales teams for which the company is actively recruiting. A bit weird to be laying off sales people on one hand and then recruiting them on the other.

I really wonder how this will affect their acquisition of Veer's sales team and whether any of those people will be affected. It doesn't appear for the time being that it will.

So the Rumors are True- 2 Billion Photos On Flickr

2,000,000,000 is a lot of zeros. Flickr confirmed earlier that it had it's 2 billionth photo uploaded to the site. The now famous photo was taken by “yukesmooks” in Sydney on November 10th with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi. Sort of a boring shot if you ask us but to each their own. Flickr stated that 3-5 million new photos are uploaded to the site daily. DAILY! Looks like they will have about 3 billion at the end of the month at that rate ;-)

If you are bored on Friday, you can apparently find various Flickr milestones by typing in the URL http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=XXXXXXX, and replacing the X’s with the photo number.

When comparing this to other sites, Facebook has 4.1 billion photos on their site. That is a lot of drunk night out shots for one website ;-)

PACA - Legal Contracts

If you are in need of a template for some legal contracts before you sell your work check out the PACA website for a legal guide. It includes NDAs, Collection of Claims, Contributor Agreements, Distribution Agreements, any Website Agreements, Copyright Registration Forms, Infringement Letters, Litigation Forms and Release Forms. Just about every contract or "put you to sleep" material you could ever want in one place.

While you have to be a member to access the database, which costs a bit of cash but it might be worth it depending on the size of your archive and the number of employees you have. A good person to speak with is Nancy Wolf. Or you can copy and use the Cutcaster agreements if you want. We don't mind ;-)

Facebook Unveils AdWords For The Social Web

Here are some snippets from the Facebook press release.

Facebook Social Ads -- AdWords for Facebook's Social Web. The ease of getting a campaign started in Facebook Ads couldn't be more reminiscent of the self-serve interface that filled Google's long tail of advertisers, key to ensuring that there was relevant ad inventory no matter when, where or what the search. The importance of this is often over looked. In order to ensure that there will depth of ad inventory required to serve relevant ads to the billions of Social Web page views, this same long tail is required. Better yet, by facing the targeting and ad creation outward, Facebook has put the responsibility of correctly creating and targeting Social Ads in the hands of the many. Much as the industry of search engine marketing sprung up to optimize advertising communities and utilization of AdWords, and in the process improved the depth and quality of Google's paid results, Facebook looks to achieve the same result for its Social Web.

The word-of-mouth addition, which allows users to pass along their choice to click, purchase or engage with a brand, is the natural extension of performance advertising for the Social Web. That is, if your ad/page/product performs or converts, then the word-of-mouth component allows your campaign to build on its success. This will promote a type of quality never before seen in performance marketing.

Facebook Page -- building Facebook's Social Web. Facebook Pages does a couple of things for Facebook's Social Web. First, it adds inventory. On the Informational Web, if you are thinking about Nike, you go to Nike's Web site. On Facebook's Social Web, if your mind wanders to Nike, most likely because your mind was prompted by a social interaction or a Facebook Social Ad, you can go to Nike's Facebook page. The idea is that Facebook's Social Web continues to mirror the real Web, with two important distinctions. First, commercial profiles are created specifically to exist and participate in the Social Web. Second, the "financial filter" set by Facebook helps to ensure quality content, and a reduction of noise (in theory). This isn't revolutionary. In fact, MySpace has a healthy head start in figuring out best practices for creating profile pages for brands to give them a Social Web presence, but it's an important component of completing the Social Web ecosystem, especially in combination with Social Ads and the analytics.

Insight and Analytics: measuring what matters. Finally, Facebook has to give marketers the proper tools in order to define and measure Social Web campaign effectiveness. The tools look great, but their effectiveness is something that will have to be vetted with much more trial.

"Participation TV" Event

I went to an interesting panel discussion put on by the Producers Guild of America last night at the New School here in NYC with my friend Hilary Roland. In between a bit of laughter, we learned more about Participation TV and how Game Participation media is a new genre of production in which "call-ins" from audience members, cell phone text messages, and online votes are incorporated into television shows, ranging from American Idol to So You Think You Can Dance.The industry is projected to be a $3 billion market in the United States within the next five years. That's a lot of text messages and should make you stand up and notice.

Chris Pfaff led the panel, which featured Jeff Miller of Telescope, Donna Campbell, Executive Director, Ericsson Mobility World North America and Rick Mandler, Vice President and General Manager, Walt Disney Internet Group and ABC's Enhanced TV.

I personally found some of it useful and it did trigger some ideas for Cutcaster but most of it wasn't that new and sometimes a bit dry. I think they could have spent less time on the presentations which lasted 15 minutes each and more time on the Q and A which lasted about 10 minutes in total and was a bit more lively.

For those of you that don't know, and I am including myself in that group until last night, The Producers Guild of America (PGA) is the premier industry association for entertainment producing professionals.

For the most up-to-date information on the PGA New Media Council East, visit the blog.

And for all you fashionistas out there, I am sure there are a few of you, check out Hilary's revamped New Faces site.

And great to finally put Bill Sobel's name to the face. We had traded emails and now we have met. I'm gald to be a part of the master connector's world ;-)

Sad Day

I want to send out my thoughts and prayers to the McGowan family. Two days ago their youngest daughter, Jayne, was murdered in what appears to be a random robbery in Charlottesville, VA. The McGowans were our neighbors growing up, just three houses away, and we knew Jayne well so I am very sad to report this. The funeral is this Friday in Manlius, NY where I grew up. Life takes some very unexpected turns and I am shocked and saddened by this random act. My heartfelt condolences go out to Signe and Jim.

It's being reported at the moment that they have apprehended two suspects so I hope this helps the family somewhat in this sad time.

Welcome to Cutcaster

Hello Cutcasters,

The time has come.

At this very moment, we are turning the future of the Cutcaster, your community based content marketplace, over to YOU, the Charter Members of Cutcaster.

You have been selected because we think you have the brightest and most promising content. Now it’s your turn to act and earn.

Please join us at Cutcaster in a global toast to your future. Here’s to extraordinary moments of inspiration, success, and helping you realize your goals and turning your freelance work and shelved content into actual income.

Clink!

On the Homepage at the bottom in the footer there is an entry titled "Desired Content." Go there and have a look. Please let us know your thoughts and any questions.

“Here is to the beginning of a beautiful partnership”

The Cutcaster Crew

Click here to visit Cutcaster.

Another One Bites the Dust - Corbis buys Veer

Say it ain't so Joe. The last of the "Independents" feel like they are gone. We have always been a big fan of Veer. They have one of the best designed sites, reek of coolness, offer Veer merchandise to buyers who make large purchases which they use effectively to promote themselves and have very creative emails, which we actually open and enjoy here at Cutcaster. And now onto the sad news ;-)

Well, they are no longer independent but I hope they stay just as cool. Corbis, mighty Mr. Bill Gate's company, picked them up as well as some cool Veer merchandise at the same time for being such a great buyer ;-) today for an undisclosed sum of cash. Rumors of either Getty or Corbis gobbling them up had been swirling for the last month and was hitting the wires again today. Seems to me that Veer lacked a truly productive sales force to handle it's clientele and they reached a tipping point. They can now leverage the Corbis sales structure to handle that and Corbis gets the cool branding that Veer represented.

Here is a link to the press release.

We haven't heard anything more than grumblings at Cutcaster but has anyone heard what the price was? I'd say at least 8 figures in the range of 10-20mm but what do we know.

Getty's Stock Breaking out Today

My eye's are not deceiving me but Getty Images stock (GYI) is up over 31.50. It's at a 3 month high.

Disclaimer- This is not financial advice to buy or sell the stock.

VCR Law vs YouTube - Copyright Reform For The Digital Age

Things have changed a lot since Napster and YouTube busted onto the scene. VCR laws as we like to call them have been challenged by this new digital world. No one took into account what would happen in a digital world when they wrote the rules because there was no digital world at the time. What has popped up is a mismatch between technology and the law with copyright holders getting the bum end of the deal. There is a great article on the struggles between the rise of technology and protecting copyright. The Ars Technica news desk reported on a lobby group from the free-speech, fair-use side of the tracks who just presented a six-step reform program for outdated US copyright laws. Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge outlined the plan in a New Media conference speech at Boston University recently.

Here is a list of the points he made in his speech, which needed to be addressed and reformed.

1. Fair Use Reform. No less a lover of copyright than Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognized in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case that fair use is a critical factor in ensuring that copyright does not violate the First Amendment’s command that Congress “make no law abridging freedom of speech.” But with large copyright holders threatening litigation over even the most incidental uses of copyright, reliance on fair use has become the province of only the bravest of artists, academics and commentators. While one might argue that the flexible four-part legal test for fair use is a good thing because it allows for new fair uses, there are some uses, like commentary and criticism, which are explicitly set out in the law. It is time to add several more. Thus, I urge Congress to add incidental, transformative and non-commercial personal uses to the list of fair uses enumerated in copyright law. Congress should also expressly provide that making a digital copy for the purpose of indexing searches is not an infringement.

Critical to any effort to reform fair use is an amendment to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA that would permit breaking a technological lock for lawful reasons. Something is amiss when most research universities must employ a DMCA officer to advise computer scientists and engineers whether they can engage in legitimate research, including research on computer security. Closer to home, the DMCA prevents lawful consumer uses like putting a legally purchased DVD on a video iPod. In order to make this amendment meaningful, the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools must be permitted for lawful purposes.

2. Limits on Secondary Liability. The VCR, TiVo and the iPod did not become wildly popular because they were blessed by the copyright industries. They became wildly popular because they challenged the status quo. The Silicon Valley mantra of “innovation without permission” is the standard we should preserve in the law, and it should be done like this:

First, the Sony Betamax standard should be codified. Again, that standard protects a manufacturer or a distributor of a technology from liability for the infringing activity of others so long as that technology is capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Second, so-called statutory damages for secondary liability should be repealed. Should a technology not meet the Sony standard, the copyright holder is still entitled to actual damages if they can prove that there has been financial harm.

3. Protections Against Copyright Abuse. The Let’s Go Crazy Baby and the many other cases of misguided take down notices demonstrate that there is little risk for the copyright holder in issuing overbroad demands. These actions do have consequences for free speech — individuals may not know their right to contest the take down notice or they may not want to test the litigious nature of powerful corporate copyright holders. Currently, the DMCA punishes a copyright holder only if it “knowingly” sends a false copyright notice. To deter this scattershot behavior, the law should instead punish a copyright holder who “knowingly or recklessly” sends out a false notice.

Similarly, there should be relief for copyright abuse outside the realm of the DMCA. Congress should legislate an affirmative cause of action for allegations of copyright abuse, and the Federal Trade Commission should declare that notices, like those used by sports leagues that overstate a copyright holder’s rights are unfair and deceptive trade practices under the Federal Trade Act. You’ve heard the notices: “This telecast is copyrighted by the XYZ league for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the XYZ League’s consent, is prohibited.” The problem with this notice is that it completely misstates the law. The Computer and Communications Industry Association has filed a complaint asking the FTC to rule that these notices constitute an unfair trade practice.

4. Fair and Accessible Licensing. It is doubtful that there are ways to make copyright holders set reasonable prices to license uses of their works that are not fair use. Nor am I sure that it is fair to force them to do so, since after all, their limited monopoly gives them the right to license their works for a million dollars or $1, or refuse to license it to anybody at any price. We are starting to see copyright clearinghouses, like the Copyright Clearance Center, which allow for simple licensing and payment schemes. And of course there are alternatives to the current copyright regime such as the Creative Commons, which permits a copyright holder to license their works under terms more favorable than the traditional “all rights reserved” standard. For example, my work is made available under a Creative Commons license that permits any use so long as it is attributed to me, is for non-commercial purposes and anybody reusing my work makes it available under these same terms.

Music, which is already subject to a variety of government mandated license schemes, is another story entirely. Without getting too deeply into the weeds, suffice it to say that the business of licensing music is completely Byzantine, in large part because of the existence of numerous publishers from whom the rights to the musical composition must be obtained. A potential licensor must also get permission from an artist or record company for the right to the sound recording, but that is usually easier. Congress has made one failed attempt to simplify the clearing of the composition right — it should try again.

In addition, Congress must resolve the problem created by the Copyright Royalty Board’s recent decision to raise by 300-1200% the royalties that Internet radio services pay to record companies. The rate has now been set so high that it threatens the viability of all but the largest webcasters. While bills have been introduced in Congress to restore the rates to what they were before the Board’s decision, Congress should instead require over-the-air broadcasters to pay these royalties and set the rate across platforms of approximately 3% of gross revenues. Broadcasters’ exemption from this performance royalty is solely a historical accident and the result of tremendous lobbying power. But there is now no reason to treat them differently from satellite and Internet radio. One other caveat to requiring that broadcasters pay this performance royalty is that the artists should receive 100% of their share, and none of that share should be assignable to record companies for any reason.

Finally, the law should make clear the distinction between a performance and a download. A copyright holder should not be able to collect two license fees merely because a device that plays performances can also record them, particularly if those recordings cannot be moved from the device to other devices.

5. Orphan Works Reform. The by-product of the elimination of formalities like registration is that every time something is fixed in a tangible medium, it automatically receives copyright protection. This speech, for instance, is entitled to all the protections of copyright. The lack of registration requirements makes it difficult, in many cases, for an artist or educator who wants to license a work to find the copyright holder. When a potential user cannot find a copyright holder after a good faith effort, we consider the work to be an “orphan” work.

Because copyright infringement is a strict liability violation and damages can be as high as $150,000 per infringement, no one would dare take a chance on using an orphan work and risking the owner showing up and running to court. The result? Hundreds of thousands of works are languishing in the dustbin of copyright, unable to be used by anybody.

In 2005, the Copyright Office proposed that anyone who does a reasonable search for the owner of a copyright but nonetheless cannot find them should only be liable for “reasonable compensation” should the copyright owner resurface. Objections from photographers, book illustrators, textile and furniture manufacturers have held up potential legislation, but their problems are not so much with an orphan works solution than with the fact that it is virtually impossible to find visual arts like these using the Copyright Office’s text-only registry. Imagine trying to find the owner of a picture of Fenway Park when the only way the registry will permit you to describe it is as “a photograph of Fenway Park.”

Sophisticated image recognition technology permits the development of accurate visual registries, and Public Knowledge has advocated a system of Copyright Office certified competitive registries that operate much like the competitive domain name registries that have dramatically lowered the cost of obtaining a domain name. Congress should act to limit damages for the use of orphan works and at the same time open the door to the creation of a new registry that should greatly benefit visual artists.

6. Notice of Technological and Contractual Restrictions on Digital Media. While there is not a lot of love from copyright reformists and consumers for digital rights management technologies, the fact is that for good or for ill, they will be used in some way, shape or form on digital media for the foreseeable future. However, if these technological locks are going to restrict lawful uses of that media, at a minimum, copyright holders should be required to provide clear and simple notice of any technological or contractual limitations on users’ ability to make fair or otherwise lawful uses of their products. This gives the purchaser the information she needs to decide whether or not to purchase the product. As Boalt Hall Law Professor Pam Samuelson has urged, failure to notify a purchaser of a copy protected CD, for example, should be considered an unfair or deceptive trade practice under the Federal Trade Act, and failure to notify the purchaser of the prohibition on circumvention of the copy protection should be a defense against any DMCA claim. Similarly, any failure to notify a purchaser of any licensing restriction should invalidate that restriction. Long click through licenses in tiny print would not qualify as notice.


To end the speech, Sohn said that it's time to stand up against an entertainment industry that's "turning 'fair use' into what Lawrence Lessig calls 'the right to hire a lawyer.'" The debate comes down to this. We definitely need something to guide us and protect us after the Fair Use Act failed to provide the necessary reforms and protection.